Monday, June 12, 2023

India Today

News and current affairs magazine

India Today4 min read
From The Editor-in-chief
The recent inauguration of the grand new Parliament building neatly symbolises Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s style of leadership. It was widely acknowledged that an upgraded parliament facility was needed, whether refurbished or new. The proposal ha
India Today1 min read
India Today
CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Aroon Purie VICE CHAIRPERSON: Kalli Purie GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: Dinesh Bhatia GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Raj Chengappa CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: Manoj Sharma GROUP CREATIVE EDITOR: Nilanjan Das; GROUP PHOTO EDITOR
India Today15 min read
Bold And Brave
PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI’S PENCHANT FOR alliteration is well-known. Among his favourites is 2S: Speed and Scale. He is fond of saying that if the previous governments thought speed was a luxury and scale a risk, he as prime minister made “speed t
India Today4 min read
Steady At The Wheel
STORMS TEND TO HAVE NAMES THESE DAYS. After a bit of wavering, this one was named, simply, Covid. A monster that switched off headlights all over the world, the Modi government wasn’t even a year into term two when it struck. The health emergency was
India Today3 min read
The Security Cordon
EVERY GOLDEN SCEPTRE IS BACKED BY A SABRE made of glinting steel. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that trusted gladiatorial lieutenant is Union home minister Amit Shah—the only one who ever gets to be named with him in one hyphenated breath. The ro
India Today3 min read
Taking India To The World
THE HEADWINDS THAT INDIA’S TRADE and commerce faced over the past four years were unprecedented. While the pandemic gave a big jolt to trade, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 once again created uncertainties around geopolitical stabil
India Today3 min readInternational Relations
A Force Of The Future
AN ARMY MARCHES ON its stomach, but its provisions roll along roads. In January 2023, a month after a clash along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between Indian and Chinese troops in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, defence minister Rajnath Singh visited
India Today4 min readInternational Relations
Our Own Global Outlook
SUBRAHMANYAM JAISHANKAR took charge of the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in May 2019; his tenure thus runs parallel to the second term of the Narendra Modi government. Within months of his taking charge, the Centre turned Article 370 into a dead
India Today3 min read
Setting A New Course
EDUCATION FACED ITS BIGGEST TEST ever when Covid-19 crept up on humanity with little warning. The transition to online learning had to take place almost overnight. India rose to the challenge commendably, given the enormity of the crisis. However, as
India Today3 min read
High On Highways
IN A RECENT INTERNAL COMMUNICATION TO HIS OFFICIALS, Nitin Gadkari, the Union minister of road transport and highways, set an ambitious target for them: to construct 60 kilometres of highways every day. It’s an uphill task, considering that in FY23,
India Today2 min read
Flight Captain
THE LAST THREE YEARS were riddled with disruptions because of two major global crises—first, the Covid-19 pandemic, and then the Ukraine-Russia war. In terms of their economic impact, the aviation sector has been among the worst-hit. Add to that a fa
India Today3 min read
Quiet Doer
IN JULY 2021, WHEN PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI hand-picked Ashwini Vaishnaw, a former IAS officer, to head the railways ministry, the brief given to him was very clear—not only did he have to eliminate the bottlenecks that were hindering reforms, bu
India Today4 min read
We Want 'Bank Of Baroda Rashtrabhasha Samman' To Be A National Institution
Speaking to India Today, Mr. Sanjiv Chadha, Manag· ing Director & CEO, Bank of Baroda said "India is a diverse country - a melting pot of cultures, religions and languages. And in its diversity lies its strength and distinctiveness. We believe that t
India Today2 min read
A Long Haul
INDIA’S MAJOR PORTS HANDLED a record 795 million tonnes of cargo in FY23, registering a 10 per cent year-on-year growth. The Union government’s flagship Sagar-Mala programme has played a key role in strengthening the port infrastructure and trade eff
India Today2 min read
The Crude Reality
THE OIL-GUZZLING NATION that we are, India saw its crude oil imports rise to 232.4 million tonnes in 2022-23, a 9.4 per cent year-on-year growth. In value terms, the imports, which help meet over 80 per cent of the country’s crude oil requirement, st
India Today2 min read
Picking Up Steam
POWER MINISTER R.K. Singh can breathe easy this summer with the weather gods showing some mercy. But things weren’t so breezy last year, when demand surged in the extraordinarily hot March and touched 128.47 billion units (BU). It ended up putting to
India Today2 min read
Coal Comfort
THIS RAIN-SPLATTERED SUMMER, coal, mines & minerals minister Pralhad Joshi could afford to be a bit relaxed. In 2022, demand for electricity peaked in March-April, straining the entire energy vertical. Since then, Joshi has been at the root of the su
India Today1 min read
Going Green
THERE IS SOME CONFIDENCE in the Mahendra Nath Pandey-led ministry’s implementation of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles, or FAME 2. The government has greenlighted their proposal to start phasing out the support ex
India Today5 min read
Discovery Of Footprints Of Ram In Chhattisgarh
Ram, not just a name here … is a symbol of faith, belief, devotion, affinity, courage, strength, dignity and self-respect. Along with the me of Ram, many glimpses of his personality are also seen in the people here. This is the birthplace of Mata Kau
India Today1 min read
Wooing the Workforce
ON THE FACE OF IT, the figures look impressive. The eShram portal of the Bhupender Yadav-led labour ministry has registered a staggering 300 million workforce, about three-fourths of the total estimated unorganised workforce. eShram allows registrati
India Today2 min read
Enabling Moves
FOR THE NEXT PHASE of the production-linked incentive scheme, the Piyush Goyal-led textiles ministry is working out the modalities with a projected outlay of Rs 4,307 crore for manufacturing of garments, made-ups and textiles accessories. In the firs
India Today2 min read
Giving Them Credit
IF THERE WAS ONE sector that took the hardest hit from Covid-19, it was the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The backbone of the Indian economy, contributing 30 per cent to the GDP and employing over 113 million people, it reportedly saw
India Today1 min read
Prize Cache
ONE OF THE BIGGEST challenges for Parshottam Rupala, who in 2021 took charge of a ministry that was formed just four years ago, came in the form of the lumpy skin disease, which felled thousands of cattle across the country last year. For the world’s
India Today2 min read
Fielding Questions
IF THERE IS ONE POLL promise the Narendra Modi government has been unable to deliver on, it is the “doubling of farm incomes”. In December 2022, Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar tabled a situation assessment survey report, ‘Agricultura
India Today2 min read
Bharat To The Fore
THE INCREASING FOCUS ON rural development has Panchayati Raj institutions in the throes of change. The call for saturation of schemes in the panchayats is making steady progress, though the ministry, headed by Giriraj Singh, is yet to develop a model
India Today1 min read
Healthy Progress
TRADITIONAL MEDICINE HAS long been regarded with scepticism than acceptance in India. Changing that dynamic was a Modi government priority from Day 1. A separate ministry for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy or AYUSH was m
India Today3 min read
Ensuring Wellness
IT’S BY THE WAY A BODY COPES under strain that you judge its robustness. India traced the full Covid journey almost like a patient—sudden capture by a virus, moments of hypoxia and panic, despair and debility, pain, convalescence and then recovery. J
India Today1 min read
Aatmanirbhar Pharma
FOR LONG DEPENDENT ON IMPORTS of key starting materials (KSM), active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and medical devices, the Rs 25,000 crore PLI scheme for pharma, bulk drugs and medical devices could well be turning the tide. Fifty-one projects f
India Today2 min read
Reaching For The Stars
WITH THE 2023 SPACE POLICY, the government cleared the decks for India to take a quantum jump into the Second Space Age. For one, the Indian Space Rese arch Organisation (ISRO) will transition out of manufacturing of operational space systems and lea
India Today1 min read
Wiring Up the Nation
ON MAY 24, UNION minister of electronics and information technology (MeitY) and communications Ashwini Vaishnaw inaugurated India’s 200,000th 5G site in Dehradun and predicted that by the end of 2023, 100,000 more sites would be added. When he took o
India Today2 min readCrime & Violence
Restoring Balance
IN THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS, under cabinet minister Kiren Rijiju, the Union ministry of law and justice remained in the news mostly because of the increasing friction between the judiciary and the executive over a host of issues—from the row over the
India Today2 min read
A Thinner Canopy
CLIMATE CHANGE has a mental component: what people think of it can be as fickle as the weather, and as determinative. In contemporary India, the environment presents a paradox: acknowledged as vital in theory, often seen as an irritant on the path to
India Today2 min read
Mixed Signals
IN ITS OWN WORDS, THE MINISTRY of Information and Broadcasting, now headed by Anurag Thakur, is entrusted with the task of disseminating information about government policies, schemes and programmes through the different mediums of mass communication
India Today2 min read
Upping the Game
INDIA’S POTENTIAL in sports is perhaps best measured in kilotonnes, given that it has the world’s largest population in the 15-24 age bracket—around 254 million, as presently estimated by the United Nations Population Fund. But it still lies largely
India Today3 min read
Showing Off India
EVER SINCE NARENDRA MODI took charge as prime minister, the eight Northeastern states have emerged as the new growth engine of India and the ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) has played a pivotal role in this. In the last eight
India Today2 min read
No Child’s Play
IT’S COMMON WISDOM THAT no society can advance until its women are empowered and contribute as equal partners in development—and India, to put it mildly, has plenty of room for improvement on that front. The work of the Women & Child Development (WCD
India Today1 min read
A Major Gap
THE MINISTRY of Minority Affairs under the PM Modi-led government has received mixed opinions over the last few years, with fund allocation being a key area of criticism. In the last financial year, the budget estimate for the ministry was Rs 5,020.5
India Today1 min read
Overlooked No More
THE YEAR 2022 saw several key milestones for India’s tribals. The country elected its first Adivasi president, set up the first research institute for tribal issues and put renewed focus on their welfare. The budget outlay for the Ministry of Tribal
India Today2 min read
Water Vows
THE JAL JEEVAN MISSION (JJM), the central government’s flagship programme launched in 2019 to provide piped water to all homes, is on track. In the past year, as many as 21.2 million new rural households got water connections, bringing the total numb
India Today3 min read
Back With A Bang
The world was quite a different place when folk-fusion act Indian Ocean last released an album, 2014’s star-studded collaborative experiment Tandanu. Narendra Modi had swept to power. Vladimir Putin had annexed Crimea in Russia’s smaller first invasi
India Today1 min read
Still Rocking
Founded in 1984, this band released two hard-rock albums as Rock Machine before adding Indian instrumentation and rebranding in 1993. Their eponymous 1995 album achieved major success before they disbanded in 1997, but a new lineup—founding members j
India Today3 min read
The Spoils Of History
How exactly did a provincial trading company end up becoming the most dominant political and economic force in the Indian subcontinent? What set of circumstances in the late Mughal era allowed the East India Company to take over, well, everything in
India Today1 min read
Podcasts
Writers Deepanjana Pal and Supriya Nair host this sharp, funny, free-flowing podcast where they talk about everything literary—dying genres, underrated authors, posthumous revisions, literature festivals, books that challenged literary establishments
India Today2 min read
Autumn Sonata
One is never too old to write a novel or any other book for that matter. Agatha Christie was well into her eighties when she wrote some of her bestselling detective stories. At the age of 90, P.G. Wodehouse continued to regale us with stories of Bert
India Today2 min read
Femmes Fatale
Parini Shroff’s debut novel The Bandit Queens tells a rousing tale of female solidarity, albeit one manifesting in an unconventional form—bumping off useless, abusive husbands—packed with the right measure of wit, hilarity and irreverence. A word of
India Today2 min read
Song Of Ice And Grit
The opening match of the Ice Hockey Women’s Asia and Oceania Championship in April left the Indian national team devastated. They had taken the lead as early as the fourth minute, but at the final buzzer, Iran thumped them 17-1. The players were awar
India Today3 min read
The Beautiful Game
It’s a day Clifford Miranda won’t forget in a hurry. On March 16, he was handed the reins of Odisha FC, after the departure of their Spanish head coach, Josep Gombau. There was this unsaid pressure ahead of the Super Cup, especially after Odisha’s st
India Today2 min read
Sleepy Hollow
The first half of Anupama Mohan’s debut novel Where Mayflies Live Forever is a series of eyewitness interviews conducted by a police officer, an ACP called Asha Peter, who we only meet after several ‘POV chapters’ centring other characters are done a
India Today2 min read
GIRL Next DOOR
Q. You seem to have a liking for the small-town young woman, be it Pataakha or Pagglait. What was your approach to playing Mahima, the police officer in Kathal? My conditioning since my debut film, Dangal, has been that without homework, set pe naa j

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